Characterizing Habitable Worlds Observatory Targets with TESS: Rotation Periods and Gyrochronological Age Restricted; Files Only

Abstract

The Astro 2020 Decadal Survey has recommended that NASA begin to design a 6-meter-class UV/vis/IR space observatory (dubbed Habitable Worlds Observatory, HWO) capable of imaging and spectrally characterizing potentially habitable exoplanets. HWO is slated to launch in the early 2040s and will target small, temperate exoplanets in the habitable zones of approximately 100 bright, nearby, Sun-like stars. To facilitate HWO precursor science efforts by the community, Mamajek \& Stapelfeldt (2023) recently compiled the NASA ExEP Mission Star List for the Habitable Worlds Observatory of 164 candidate target stars. We analyzed time-series photometry from NASA’s TESS mission to determine the rotation of the stars, and therefore determine gyrochronological ages for these Sun-like stars. We report the measurement of TESS rotation periods for 35 of the HWO ExEP target stars and estimates of gyrochronological ages for 20 of these stars. The ages for these stars range from 99 to 1527 Myr. The results were unsurprisingly biased towards the youngest, most active stars in the sample. Therefore, the future goals are to find longer rotation periods leading to older stars.

Table of Contents

Contents

1 Introduction

1.1 Exoplanet Detection

1.2 Selecting Stars

1.3 Gyrochronolgy

2 Data

2.1 HWO Target Stars

2.2 TESS Data

2.3 Issues with Data

3 Analysis

3.1 Periodogram Analysis

3.2 Autocorrelation Analysis

3.3 Additional Attempted Analysis Methods

3.4 Comparison of Measured Rotation Periods to Published Values

3.5 Estimating Gyrochronological Ages

3.6 Results

4 Discussion And Future Work

4.1 Discussion

4.2 Future Work

4.3 Conclusion

References

5 Tables

About this Honors Thesis

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School	Emory College
Department	Physics and Astronomy
Degree	B.S.
Submission	Honors Thesis
Language	English
Research Field	Physics, Astrophysics Physics, Astronomy and Astrophysics
Keyword	Astronomy data analysis Exoplanet systems
Committee Chair / Thesis Advisor	Alissa Bans, Emory University
Committee Members	Merida Batiste, Emory University Erin Bonning, Emory University

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